Classic Anime

[marurun]

Yeah, these lists are long, but they're all worthy titles. There are many other worthy titles as well, but these are the ones I hold close. These are all titles that I think hold up years after their original release, in plot, characterizations, animation, and music. They're the real deal, the complete package, and only a couple of them are polarizing. Most of these are pretty easy pics, and don't rely merely on popularity but also on other measures of "quality" to back them up.

Older classics (before the 90s):

Macross
Gundam 0079
Gundam 0080
Gundam Zeta
Akira
Record of Lodoss War OVAs (made in 1990, but feels older classic-y)
Bubblegum Crisis OVAs
Vampire Hunter D (first movie)
Vampire Princess Miyu OVAs
Patlabor OVAs and movies (movies were before and after the cusp)
Ranma 1/2 TV (first 2 or 3 seasons only)
Kimagure Orange Road
Yawara!
Lupin III Castle of Cagliostro and Lupin III Fuma Conspiracy

More recent classics (mostly in the 90s and early aughts):

Escaflowne (!!)
Macross Plus (!!)
Trigun (Torn on this one. I really enjoyed it, but I'm having trouble determining classic status based on quality with my own enjoyment removed from the picture)
Ghost in the Shell movie
GiTS: SAC
Cowboy Bebop (!!)
Oh! My Goddess OVAs
Tenchi Muyo: Ryo Ohki OVAs (first 2 batches only)
Tenchi Muyo: the Movie
Gundam F91
Gundam 0083
Vampire Hunter D (second movie)
Dragon FUCKING Half (I need say no more on this entry)
Gunsmith Cats
You're Under Arrest
Ninja Scroll
Wings of Honneamise

[Xeogred]

I'll backtrack on my lawn joke for a second there. I just get tired of hearing the Toonami shows name dropped in general. Whether those, Akira, and GITS are "the only anime" too many people claim to like, or whatever... eh I'm just an ass about it. Even if those are the times I started to know more about anime myself, hah.

*shrugs* I don't have an argument beyond that and just being an asshole about this specific thing when it comes to anime. I guess it's like going up to somebody and you find out they love gaming, and just start talking about Mario Kart.

Time doesn't measure quality for me. If I consider 90's gaming to be retro like most of us here, I guess I should review my thoughts on anime, but it's weird. I guess the jumps in videogame technology makes it feel like even bigger leaps than some other forms of entertainment and such out there. In general I think the early 90's is my cut off, but I guess I can see how that can be all of the 90's and maybe even early 2000's exceptions of a few shows that were still cel based (HxH, Ippo).

So I have my preferences for old anime, but no I'm not lame and won't watch new stuff. Recently downloaded Psycho-Pass myself since I'm biased for sci-fi.
http://myanimelist.net/profile/Echelon

Unless I missed it, this thread has sadly been lacking Wings of Honneamise.

This video takes me places. Inspiring.

Pretty good, weird, down to Earth movie. Wings reminds me of Patlabor and Planetes... stories about average people doing average jobs, haha. I dig it.

I'm actually watching through Heavy Metal L-Gaim just now. So far it's not as good as Five Star Stories, but still enjoyable. FSS is a manga everyone should check out, it's such a shame the Toyspress releases are stupidly hard to acquire nowadays. I was lucky enough to gather all the 26 translated volumes some years ago. The anime barely scratches the surface of the epic scope that is FSS.

Yeah, I've always heard that about FSS. Looks right up my alley, is it officially done? I always hear mixed answers on that. I'm not big on manga but I can make a few exceptions, and this looks amazing. I totally love Nagano's stuff.

How far are you in L-Gaim? I think it was easily one that gets increasingly awesome the further you get. The middle was similar to some Zeta stuff, but the final 3rd chunk or so was incredible. Even if it's not totally one of Tomino's most ambitious shows, or extremely depressing or overly happy like Xabungle/Gainer, I think it's one of his best shows directing wise for sure. Just had really great pacing and a consistently fun vibe throughout, without dipping in quality like ZZ did off and on.

I'm okay with ZZ, but the ending with a certain someone really rubs me the wrong way. I'd take it over a lot of AU Gundam's and other bad shows, but yeah ZZ isn't without its flaws.

CCA could have been a lot more, but I'm with bruno. I've never got the fuss about people dissecting the plot or logic way too much or whatever. I went in expecting Amuro vs Char Final Fight Ultra and that's exactly what I got, haha. Char was crazy from the get go, blew people up with bazookas to the face, switched sides like flipping burgers, and there's several years worth that go by in between the shows/movies... so it was only a matter of time before the guy would start dropping meteors... half joking, but yeah I think he even clearly lays out his plans and philosophies during the speech in the movie itself. He was finally in a position of supreme power and wasn't messing around. Up to that point, he was always preaching crazy stuff and did whatever he want. It adds up to me.

With the inclusion of Kamille and other key characters though, it definitely could have been a lot more interesting and maybe even a series of movies though. But for what it was, I still dig CCA.

What I really hate is that F91 was supposedly going to be a full 50 episode series, doesn't happen, and instead we get Victory. Which I completely loathe. Even Tomino himself supposedly hates it and I say job well done, he successfully made me hate it too. lol

[Ghegs]

I'm actually watching through Heavy Metal L-Gaim just now. So far it's not as good as Five Star Stories, but still enjoyable. FSS is a manga everyone should check out, it's such a shame the Toyspress releases are stupidly hard to acquire nowadays. I was lucky enough to gather all the 26 translated volumes some years ago. The anime barely scratches the surface of the epic scope that is FSS.

Yeah, I've always heard that about FSS. Looks right up my alley, is it officially done? I always hear mixed answers on that. I'm not big on manga but I can make a few exceptions, and this looks amazing. I totally love Nagano's stuff.

How far are you in L-Gaim? I think it was easily one that gets increasingly awesome the further you get. The middle was similar to some Zeta stuff, but the final 3rd chunk or so was incredible.

Not sure what you mean by "officially done"? I'm not sure if the manga is finished in Japan, it's oddly hard to find information about the series.

To gush about FSS a little bit more, every volume of the English releases have these background info pages. There's colored pictures, info of the mechas, character biographies, a huge timeline, information about the planets, animal species, fashions, weapons, how militaries and their different branches work, images of every military rank's insignia and uniforms and so on and so forth. It's quite extensive, and a lot of it doesn't even get used within story itself, but it does effectively create an image of a huge, real world in the reader's mind.

I'm still near L-Gaim's beginning, so there's certainly room for it to develop. I remember Nagano saying that L-Gaim and FSS aren't related, but there are so many similarities beyond just the mechas that it's easy to consider L-Gaim happening within FSS' universe.

[Exhuminator]

I'll backtrack on my lawn joke for a second there. I just get tired of hearing the Toonami shows name dropped in general.

Yeah I think I get more where you were coming from now. It can be annoying to see the same old overrated anime series touted tirelessly when there's far better stuff just beneath the surface... if one can be bothered to dive in.

I remember as a young teenager having to order the Right Stuf catalog out of the back of sci-fi magazines like Omni, just so I could then mail order anime series from said catalog on VHS. Usually series I'd never heard of too, because I lived out in the sticks. Then when I got a car I'd have to drive two hours just to find a store in a mall somewhere that sold anime on VHS... again, always a crapshoot as I had no way of researching anime without the internet (circa 1995 here) or fellow interested peers. The effort it took to find anime made it seem all that much more special. So there was a period of time I started getting pissy when anime began taking off domestically in the late 90's and early 00's especially. I really got irritated hearing about Cowboy Bebop over and over again every time I asked someone if they like anime. Over time I realized I was just being elitist though, because the more popular anime became, the easier it would be for me to obtain the more obscure releases.

[Gunstar Green]

Ranma 1/2 is another one of those shows that went off the rails because it outpaced the manga. It's unfortunate because the manga actually ends and wraps everything up. My biggest problem with the anime is when you get to the point where you realize there's never going to be any resolution and the jokes are starting to repeat and continuing to watch is pointless.

CCA could have been a lot more, but I'm with bruno. I've never got the fuss about people dissecting the plot or logic way too much or whatever. I went in expecting Amuro vs Char Final Fight Ultra and that's exactly what I got, haha. Char was crazy from the get go, blew people up with bazookas to the face, switched sides like flipping burgers, and there's several years worth that go by in between the shows/movies... so it was only a matter of time before the guy would start dropping meteors... half joking, but yeah I think he even clearly lays out his plans and philosophies during the speech in the movie itself. He was finally in a position of supreme power and wasn't messing around. Up to that point, he was always preaching crazy stuff and did whatever he want. It adds up to me.

With the inclusion of Kamille and other key characters though, it definitely could have been a lot more interesting and maybe even a series of movies though. But for what it was, I still dig CCA.

Yeah I think a lot of people watching Zeta forgot that in the first Gundam Char was a two-faced serial killer on a mission of personal revenge even against people who had been his friends. He's always been prone to extremism.

Also I really liked how Zeta handled Char's character development so subtly. He starts off as a soldier who's continuing to fight because it's simply what he does. People who know him begin pushing him to grasp the reigns of leadership because they understand what a powerful symbol he is and agree with his basic ideologies.

He finally accepts the responsibility that comes with being who he is and starts being a leader. Though his ideologies remain the same they start to grow more desperate and extreme as time passes and war continues to be waged. He decides on one, big drastic solution that is both completely crazy and morbidly understandable.

Char is awesome, one of my favorite character arcs in any anime. I think things may have been better if the original plot of ZZ had happened with Char as one of its central figures instead of CCA. It would've given us more time to see Char become what he is in CCA.

[marurun]

Ranma 1/2 is another one of those shows that went off the rails because it outpaced the manga. It's unfortunate because the manga actually ends and wraps everything up.

No, the manga doesn't wrap everything up. It looks like it's about to, and then...

It just reverts everything back to the initial state, with everyone interrupting the wedding and pursuing Ranma again as if nothing had happened. The manga's ending is a total cop-out.

[Gunstar Green]

I guess that's true but at least it WAS an ending. The main conflict of getting Ranma and Akane to admit to liking each other was out of the way. That was ending enough for me.

But yes, "everything" was too strong a word.

[marurun]

I guess that's true but at least it WAS an ending. The main conflict of getting Ranma and Akane to admit to liking each other was out of the way. That was ending enough for me.

I had a completely different reaction. It's like she resolved the story, and then immediately undid everything in one fell swoop. It was like she cried "Psych!" and then yanked everything back.

[Ghegs]

I guess that's true but at least it WAS an ending. The main conflict of getting Ranma and Akane to admit to liking each other was out of the way. That was ending enough for me.

I had a completely different reaction. It's like she resolved the story, and then immediately undid everything in one fell swoop. It was like she cried "Psych!" and then yanked everything back.

Going to have to agree here - I bought every volume of the manga as they were being translated and released here locally. Read through the last chapter and was extremely disappointed at the instant return to status quo, I was having flashbacks to watching episodes of Star Trek: TNG. What the hell did I read the last 38 volumes for? I ended up donating all of them to a children's hospital, so at least some good came out of it.

I am curious if the ending is because Takahashi really couldn't bare to bring any sort of closure to the story, or if she was encouraged to leave the ending open so that the story could be picked up later with minimal fuss. I don't know if mangaka generally get that sort of pressure from publishers, though.

[Sano]

Just to clarify, I meant the term "classic" in the manor that lots of people enjoyed and still do enjoy the series. Not a time based classic.